Much has been
written and said of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s performance in the
second ballot to the French presidential election as being an upheaval and
major political shake up. The ousting of Lionel Jospin, the main leftist
social democrat, certainly seemed unimaginable. It is as if the US
presidential election were to be played out not between a Republican
candidate and a Democrat candidate but between George W. Bush and the
political representative of the Ku Klux Klan!

Yet, after the calamity of April 21, 2002, things
seemed to return to democratic order. On May 5, left-leaning and
republican right-leaning electors cast their ballots (25% of eligible
voters did not fill out a ballot) and decidedly (82.21% of votes) backed
Jacques Chirac who stood for guaranteeing the values of French democracy.
Then, in the June legislative elections, the low number of votes for the
Front National, Le Pen’s political party, meant it failed to vote in a
single deputy to the National Assembly. It could be tempting to argue that
the vote for the extreme right was nothing more than a passing expression
of dissent.

In
reality, however, it would seem that the margin held by the extreme right
in France is large.

And,
unfortunately, it would seem that this margin is not growing any smaller.
It would furthermore seem that the ideas of the French extreme right have
infiltrated French society as a whole.

These
ideas—largely held by the Front National and the Mouvement National
Républicain, an offshoot of the former—are equally simplistic
and heinous. Officially, these parties advocate a right of nationality
founded on blood, no native soil (the “national preference” when it comes
to access to work and social benefits), moving foreigners to the borders,
leaving the European Union and confining women to the home. Ideologically,
these “positions” mostly stem from keeping to the idea of “white racial”
supremacy and an ethnic view of Nation. It is public knowledge that Le Pen
wrote nazi songs, that he keeps friendships with former SS officers and
that he performed torture during the Algerian War. In the speeches of
Jean-Marie Le Pen, his hate for Arabs rivals his anti-Semitism. When Le
Pen says “France for the French,” how easy it is to also hear “and out
with Arabs”!

It bears remembering that Le Pen has the support of
certain backers among the “pieds noirs,” French Algerians who had to leave
Algeria when it gained independence in 1962. However, these very “pieds
noirs” hated the Gaullists (Jacques Chirac being its spiritual
embodiment), in so much as they felt betrayed by General de Gaulle who
agreed to Algeria’s independence. But the ideas of Le Pen affect a far
bigger electorate than that made up of this segment of the “pied noir”
population. In total, 5.4 million voters out of 29.5 gave their support to
the extreme right (the FN and the MNR) in the first ballot of the French
presidential election. On the second ballot, Jean-Marie Le Pen won 5.5
million votes!

Thus, the extreme right did not lose any
votes between the first and second ballots, and this despite
the tremendous pressure put on voters between the two ballots, voters
(including leftist voters) who decidedly and unanimously stood against Le
Pen, and thus for Jacques Chirac on the second ballot. This is like PQ
voters strongly backing the Quebec Liberal Party in order to block the ADQ!

Contrary to what has often been said, all
right-leaning voters do not belong to “la France d’en bas” [the low-end
France] (a catch phrase used to describe any Frenchman afflicted with any
type of defect, including poverty, intellectual deficiency, coldness to
Europe as well as identity-based and national inklings). When we consider
the extreme right’s share of the vote in Paris’ 16th and 8th
“arrondissements” (among the richest neighbourhoods in France), we find
that the extreme right also attracted the comfortable and highly qualified
“France du dessus” [the high-end France]. Thus regardless of living
conditions or socio-cultural background, nearly 10% of the French agreed
whole-heartedly with the ideas of the extreme right. Even though this is
coming to light today, the phenomenon is nothing new. Since 1995, the
Front National has never received a share of votes under 15%, regardless
of the type of election (presidential in 1995, legislative in 1997,
regional in 1998).

What is however relatively new is the place given
to the ideas cherished by the extreme right in the overall French
political arena. The French presidential and legislative election
campaigns were carried out under the predominant notion of the fight
against rising crime rates. This very “extreme right” notion seems to have
become extremely unifying judging the overwhelming UMP (Jacques Chirac’s
political party) victory in the legislative elections. It would appear
that a majority of Frenchmen are in fact in agreement with two things:
that the French are exposed to an unacceptable level of crime and that
repressive measures are called for to counteract this reality.

If it were probable that only a small
portion of the population living in France is in fact exposed
to an unacceptable level of crime, it is nonetheless improbable that a
purely repressive arsenal would reduce levels of crime. The simplistic
arguments put forward by the traditional political class encourages the
spread of extreme right ideas throughout French society. This position,
far from discrediting such arguments, runs the risk of giving just little
more credibility to right-wing ideas and possibly even to right-wing
representatives. The possibility of making a large margin even larger
exists, and those who find “solutions” in hating the other maintain the
margin.

Similarly, holding European summits on the fight
against illegal immigration gives credence to the idea already strongly
held by many Europeans that immigration is intrinsically bad. And this
even though it has been known for some time now that immigration is an
economic and demographic necessity for Europe.